All secure areas of conventional building structures have the need for keys, typically carried by persons for purposes of accessing these secure areas. The key may be a standard metallic ‘hard’ key, or newer electronic and ‘swipe’ types of keys. There is an inherent risk when keys are carried by persons, in that the keys may be lost or misplaced and in many cases unrecoverable and irreplaceable. Additionally, a lost or misplaced key is a real and potentially debilitating security threat to the building and its secure contents. Typically, a significant investment is required to re-pin or re-key a door or access point, and the loss of a master key may require the re-keying of an entire facility or building.
Responding to this significant risk, many organizations attempt to mitigate the potential loss by designing and implementing ‘key control procedures.’ These procedures limit personnel's access to keys or at least to master keys, and may require an authorized individual to sign keys in and out. In many cases, the individual must relinquish personal identification to establish positive custody of the key. Often the key holder's personal identification card is held until the keys are safely returned and accounted for.
Other items may need to be kept secure in much the same manner as conventional keys. The item may be any needed element of a security system, such as an identification card, a data chip or hard-drive, or a valuable item or container. Again, there is an inherent risk when any item is carried by persons, in that the item may be lost or misplaced and in many cases unrecoverable and irreplaceable. Additionally, a lost or misplaced item is potentially non replaceable, even with adequate insurance, which may be too costly to acquire in coverage of potential loss.
Co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/568,073, also assigned to Tether Technologies, Inc. of Seattle, Wash., discloses a Wireless Item Loss Prevention System, with many of the basic features of the present invention. However, there is still a need for improvement in the institutional control of items including keys, which involves a more simple and efficient procedure or system for the issuance and tracking of the items. There is a need for improvement in the reliable handling of keys and other items, as required for high security facilities and in the transfers of valuable or high security items, such as banks, hospitals, government offices and other secure buildings. A preemptive item loss system must strive to eliminate the lost time, security breaches and costly repercussions due to lost keys.
The present invention provides for an improved control of items, such as keys, which can efficiently track and prevent the loss or misplacement of keys. This improved control is well suited for use in typical institutional facilities and other secure buildings or structures. The present invention will be better understood by reference to the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.